For this week’s Friday Food, I am posting a link to an article that I thought was great. Click here and see if you’re motivated like I was to improve on a few pantry staples. One in particular that I am determined to fix is to stock more dry beans than canned. As vegetarians, we eat a LOT of beans in this house. I have generally taken the easy way out by buying canned beans (garbanzo, black, cannellini, kidney) but after some encouragement from my older and wiser sister and then reading this article, I finally bought a bunch of dried beans. I am going to cook some this week and let you know how it turns out! (And in doing a little reading on cooking beans, I noticed that while it generally takes an hour and a half to cook beans on the stove, it only takes 5-7 minutes in a pressure cooker! Maybe that’s what I need!)
So what do you think you can improve on in your pantry?
7 comments:
That's random, I just got dried black beans with similar intentions--only to realize I really know nothing about dried beans. Yep, they're still sitting in my pantry waiting for me to be enlightened with what to do with them. Let me know how that works out...for real.
I love this article. I think I'm going to print it out and put it on the refrigerator. I really love all the useful stuff I learn from your friday foods.
I also cook them in the crockpot, just rinse them, fill the crockpot about 1/4 full of beans, then up to 3/4 full with water, cook on high for 4 hours. Of course not 5-7 minutes, but you definitely don't have to sit and tend the stove while they are simmering. I also freeze them like the article said so I can just microwave and drain them.
K, wait. What if you can't stand beans of any sort and you only store them in case of dire emergency? Gimme some other vegetarian options. Oh yeah, can't stand tofu either.
I don't know Maren, but I do the same thing she does! I always have a couple of varieties of beans in my freezer, which is just as easy as canned beans. And when mentioning your older and wiser sister, you could at least drop my name. I need my 15 minutes of fame.
I've been doing the same.... since we already seem to have so many dried beans in our food storage, I figured I should know how to use them. I've found if you do the overnight soak, you can shave off some of the cooking time - but I'm definitely trolling for a pressure cooker as well! (I'm hoping my mom still has one tucked away in the garage somewhere :)
i've done the crockpot thing with pinto beans that are going to made into refried beans--that way it doens't matter if/when i over cook them. I'll have to try it with black beans, since we go through about 5 cans a week of those....no joke. I'm not sure that's good, but it's the one kind of bean that we all can agree on :) I've been thinking about storing dried beans more, anyway, so now you've given me one more reason to do so!
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